"Astronomers see 'warm' glow of Uranus's rings"
Posted on 06/20/2019 8:55:48 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The rings of Uranus are invisible to all but the largest telescopes—they weren't even discovered until 1977—but they're surprisingly bright in new heat images of the planet taken by two large telescopes in the high deserts of Chile.
The thermal glow gives astronomers another window onto the rings, which have been seen only because they reflect a little light in the visible, or optical, range and in the near-infrared. The new images taken by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) allowed the team for the first time to measure the temperature of the rings: a cool 77 Kelvin, or 77 degrees above absolute zero—the boiling temperature of liquid nitrogen and equivalent to 320 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
The observations also confirm that Uranus's brightest and densest ring, called the epsilon ring, differs from the other known ring systems within our solar system, in particular the spectacularly beautiful rings of Saturn.
By comparison, Jupiter's rings contain mostly small, micron-sized particles (a micron is a thousandth of a millimeter). Neptune's rings are also mostly dust, and even Uranus has broad sheets of dust between its narrow main rings.
The lack of dust-sized particles in Uranus's main rings was first noted when Voyager 2 flew by the planet in 1986 and photographed them. The spacecraft was unable to measure the temperature of the rings, however.
To date, astronomers have counted a total of 13 rings around the planet, with some bands of dust between the rings. The rings differ in other ways from those of Saturn.
observations were designed to explore the temperature structure of Uranus' atmosphere, with VLT probing shorter wavelengths than ALMA.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Warm glow, and so? We all know flatulence from Ur anus is warm, sometime hot if you ate spicy food.
“Astronomers see ‘warm’ glow of Uranus’s rings”
Unh,uh. Not mine they don’t ...
Preparation H would go a long way to help that.
Probably don’t want to light any matches around those rings.
Now, that’s got Mayor Pete’s attention!
LOL! I still find it hard to believe that man was a two-term President. What a phony.
My God, it must be the new “smart chair” I bought. I’m getting a seat cushion.
Q: How do Pete and Chasten have computer sex?
A: See colon, enter.
Hot rings around Uranus? There’s a country song in there somewheres
Excuse me?
Thats what ‘buttplugs’ husband/wife said. I’m out.
The last few words of the title that were omittted are “as they celebrate gay pride month” ...
Urectum. …. . . darn near killed him . . .
Uranus has a certain warm ring to it. Dontcha think Pete?
When Uranus is full of dust it’s way past time for some ExLax.
Country and western song “ Longing For The Warm Glow of The Rings Around Uranus. “. I’ll miss them always, they made me feel so warm.
Thanks BenLurkin. I plan to exercise a modicum of civility and restraint in this topic, although it is odd that while all the other planets are viewed using telescopy, Uranus is studied using colonoscopy.
***n, that was classy.
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